Well it started with a cut through Vyner Street, the hope at the start of the Condo 2024 adventure, how far would we get before bailing out this time? The quickest way from the Organ bunker to The Approach Gallery is via Vyner Street which would have been a kind of symbolic way to go even if it wasn’t the genuinely quickest route from here to the gallery above the East London pub of the same name. Down Vyner Street, turn at Cultivate corner, past Nicoletti, the only gallery still functioning on the rather sad looking thing that is the street these days, past the Stik on the shutters of what was once that really annoying artist-exploiting gallery who’s name I conveniently forget now (wonder if the current occupants know what they have there? it is a wonder that those shutters haven’t turned up in a Sotheby’s auction by now, the Stiks of East London are disappearing alongside this part of the city’s artistic cutting edge, long may that one stay there). The current Nicoletti exhibition is still the one they were running for the final two months of last year, good show but we’ve kind of been there and done that now, worth catching if you haven’t though.

Actually the Saturday afternoon thrash around the galleries and the first day of Condo started up in Central Hackney with a show that was nothing to do with Condo, an exhibition that we’d promised to check out, an exhibition I was promised (via a personal e.mail and their social media postings) would be open from 10.30am, a show that only opened last Thursday evening and I’m pretty sure isn’t on for that long, maybe just this week so you’d think they’d have the whole thing open and ready on the first and probably only Saturday of the exhibition – you’d think they’d be there in the gallery they’ve hired, flags out, big fanfares, “here we are, please come in, come see our art!”. No sign of life anywhere (and they’ve been bugging us for weeks to come see it and support it, asking us to cover it). A wasted walk up to central Hackney on a Saturday lunch time, annoying! Sometimes artists can be their own worst enemies, surely a show is about more than just the Instagram postings of photos of all your art student mates standing outside free beer in hand at the opening?   

Off to Condo then. Not sure what’s going on with the show in the main gallery room of The Approach right now, no, let me rephrase that, not sure if I care that much about what’s going on in the main room of the Approach tight now. Something to do with a moth and hey look, there’s been some really great shows up those treacherous stairs over the years, some really really good ones in recent times, that Anna Glantz exhibition last year, Caitlin Keogh, Phillip Allen’s shows in the space always look good enough to eat, there’s been dozens of rewarding shows, but it can, how can I politely put it? It can be a bit of a hit and miss and we’ll leave the current show of theirs with you and retreat to the much smaller annex gallery space where as always, the guest gallery as part of The Approach’s contribution to Condo is once again housed.

Condo has been a start of the year thing in London for quite a while now, started in 2016 if we have it right, expanded to other cities now but always London in January. A collaborative event where a number, 23 this year, of the more established or establishment (or establishment minded maybe?) galleries of London throw open their doors and offer their walls to guests galleries from all over the world. Condo usually takes place over a period of around a month, it does all tend to revolve around the first weekend when all the participating spaces promise to be open all at the same time – shock horror, some of them even opened their usually, even when they do have an exhibition on, locked during opening hours doors. It is rare that you don’t have to ring and wait at the unsignposted Herald Street Gallery, almost felt unnatural to be able to just walk in through an open door on a Saturday afternoon! 

So, twenty three participating London galleries, each hosting an overseas gallery or maybe two galleries in some cases, a combination of some fifty galleries in all. You’ve got guest galleries from New York, Sao Paulo, Beruit, Paris, Mexico City, Vienna, Los Angeles and more and well you get the picture…

First thing to say is I really do want to be positive about it all and yes, after day one’s exploring over on the East Side of town, Condo 2024 seemed a little more engaging that it has been in previous years, a little bit more of a smile the collective faces of the hosts and the participants, The feeling in terms of Condo is probably a little more positive then it has been in underwhelming years past, but what of the actual art? Other than the London Art Fair (and Cacotopia at Annka Kultys Gallery – alas the eighth edition was suddenly cancelled last week with very little warning), Condo is really the thing that heralds the new year in terms of London art and by the time it comes around we’re always chomping at bit to get going again after the turkey murdering and all the inconvienience of the artless holidays. I’m an art addict, by mid January I really am needing that hit that a good art show provides and every year we head out to Condo full of hope, well not quite every year, Condo hasn’t happened since 2020, pandemic and all that, but we do head out full of hope, hungry for fresh art, ready for more. And pretty much every year we come back feeling rather deflated so (as we might have said in the preview) we weren’t really expecting too much from Condo 2024 (which is a shame because the concept is an excellent one and all these galleries opening their doors for free really can’t be taken for granted, art galleries should never be taken for granted, Condo should, in theory, be brilliant). 

Let’s go follow the Eastern side of the Condo map and see what we find./ We didn’t get that much from the Approach, not from the main gallery where something with bits of neon (more neon, yawny yawn yawn yawn) alongside some rather traditional looking textile art is on show. The Condo related art in to be found in the small annex space where a gallery from Beriut called Marfa’ Projects is showing a number of oil paintings on the wall – the work of an artist by the name of Talar Aghbashian, a show or a small body of work collectively called Solace of the Afterimage (where apparently everything is a tree). There is a certain freedom to her work, in the urgency of some of the line, the harder outlines that in some kind of way accent the form of those dark landscapes and the richness of the paint, there is something in the darkness of it all, in the energy of the actual application. Talar Aghbashian is apparently a London-based artist from Beruit (does that kind of defeat the object of bringing something or someone over? Isn’t this just The Approach hosting a London based artist?). There is some kind of relationship to the landscape here, her relationship? There is an energy, a sense of being there, wherever ‘there’ may be? is it Beirut? London? England? Where is ‘there’? I guess, on reflection, there was a something positive to be said about the day’s first Condo port of call, maybe that’s because, we’d later discover, it was the best of things….     

Leave The Approach, double back to Auto Italia, the gallery isn’t part of Condo but it is on our route and did I notice rare signs of life when I rushed passed just now? Surely not, can’t be, not seen that place bothering (or letting anyone know they are) for months and months (years? I was pretty convinced they’d closed down). You open the Auto Italia door to meet a big heavy curtain and behind it blackness, there’s some kind of film running, is there anyone in here? Give it a few minutes, nothing much happens on the screen, some hippy-like creatures dancing in a field, nothing that’s making me want to stay (or come back later) politely leave, off on the Condo trail, was there anyone else in there Surely must have been?  

You see, you’ve got all these establishment galleries with their reputations and their prestige and they gone and invited all these overseas galleries so you are kind of hoping, well half expecting something rather special aren’t you? Something that you might not usually see, something out there on the edge, something a little dangerous? Shocking maybe? Thrilling? Cutting? At least engaging? Just something different? Just something. You just expect something, and yes, compared with previous years what we encountered was a little more engaging than previous years but hey, relatively, and did we, on reflection, besides Talar Aghbashian’s paintings maybe, did really see anything that good? Should I just politely abandon this review and just walk away right now. I mean, the policy around here in general is to only cover things when we’ve got something positive to say about those things. Should I ven be spending time and space ob this piece?

The Approach’s contribution to Condo was alright, and now we’re off towards the Hackney Road (via Auto Italia), off to Soft Openings where their big room currently houses their own just opened group show (we’ll politely pass by that one) and head to the smaller side room that’s hardly ever used even though it makes for a rather decent sized art space that they could do so much with (guest artists or curators from East London maybe?). For Condo the Soft Openings side space is occupied by a group show curated by a gallery from Prishtina. Kosovo, a gallery called LambdaLambdaLambda and well… um… Certainly a lot of people out checking the opening day of Condo, healthy amount of well wrapped up people walking around with their glossy maps or mobile phones in hand. There’s a giant green cuddly toy in the corner of the Lambda group show, kind of thing East London artist C.A Halpin might photograph and post on her social media if she’d seen it on the Hackney street, and well, I guess there’s a story behind the giant green cuddly toy animal thing and the red on the gallery floor underneath it and the red heart and is it some kind of comfort blanket or did something happen to the owner or…? What to read into it? Does it really demand we do? I want to be really positive, I really really (really) do – these gallery people have, in some cases, come a long way, I want to say things are really good, that this really is something, really do want to be positive, I really want to tell you how good these Condo shows are… 

Off to Herald Street Gallery via the Street art and graff of Clare Street that also seems to have slowed down in the last couple of years. leave a couple of #43Leaves pieces on the Condo route (both, so social media tells me, are grabbed rather quickly). off to Herald Street and through the shock of the open door of the gallery (that door is never open! You never know if they’re open or not, you never know is you should ring the bell, they don’t do open signs or information, toy always feel guilty for disturbing them when you do ring the door bell), Herald Street Gallery are hosting (or collaborating in this case) with a gallery called Ehrlich Steinberg from Los Angeles and a group show and oh well, I’m here writing this on the morning after the day before, editing the hundreds of photos (or at least hasty phone images snapped) and well, I have little of note to offer in terms of the Herald Street show – there was an interesting window lying on the street outside the gallery that someone had tagged, there was a couple of sculptures or installation pieces inside the gallery, once again the space was a lot busier than it usually is and well something to so with mirrors and exchanges and Michael Dean‘s black concrete smiles standing the middle of the space, a sculpture called Unfucking Titled (fuck) is kind of amusing and hang on, Michael Dean? We know his work, he’s another London based artist (from Newcastle), we’ve positively covered his work in Herald Street before, this surely isn’t what Condo is about?

Quick look in Maureen Paley Gallery‘s Three Colts Lane space (their actual contribution to Condo is housed at their Studio M space, the Three Colts space is just on the route so we’ll quickly drop in – we do go on to ring the bell and climb the stairs to M Space later, was it worth it? A couple of washed out photos that any first year photography student would have thrown away, you work it out). Actually there is now three of four newish gallery spaces at the foot of a new build on the recently redeveloped Three Colts Lane, something positive in these times of East London galleries demolished or priced out or the mostly heartless scurge of property redevelopment and beard growing coffee shops. 

Mother’s Tankstation and Project Native Informant are both now found on the aforementioned Three Colt Lane, between the two of them they’re hosting galleries from Mexico City, Soule and Vienna as their respective parts of Condo and there’s a cat bird thing that I guess is kind of nice and sweet and is being pointed at by a dozen camera phones, there’s some large photos of cats (and an artist showing people photos of his cats on his mobile phone) and I want to be positive… Over there there’s some kind of water colour illustration politeness and animation and I still want to be positive, I want to write about how the art excites, how it engages, I want the art to challenge, I want the art Condo is offering to move me, I want to tell you Condo is alive with lots of wonderful things, that you really need to go – it is better than is has been this year, a little less up itself, but is that really the best you have to offer Condo? Really, is that it? Photos of cats shipped in from the other side of the world, we can look at social media if we want photos of cats!  On to Public Gallery and Emalin and wherever else we ended up on the first day of Condo and well, it hasn’t been as outright annoying as previous years and it does feel a little more like it wants to engage but really, 53 galleries when hosts and guests are counted together, is that really the best you can collectively offer? Beside there being something in Talar Aghbashian‘s paintings at The Approach, and the slight cheat of Michael Dean‘s concrete being involved at Herald Street, Condo, even though it felt less annoying then before, in reality, in terms of what we’ve seen of it so far, offered very little and the real interest the day offered was in the Michael Andrew Page exhibition Claustrum at Project Native Informant, that wasn’t part of Condo (more on Claustrum and a late afternoon visit to the new show at IMT Gallery on the Cambridge Heath Gallery later). 

Actually I think we’re probably done with Condo already, I really don’t think, unless I happen to be passing anyway, really don’t think I can be bothered with any more of it. I bumped into someone on my way back to Hackney, having enquired if I had been to Condo asked what my highlights and recommendations were, “there were none” was my downcast answer, and I really don’t like giving an answer like that, I really want to be excited by art, I want to be able to convey that excitement, I want to be able to shout on those fractured pages that you must go see this and that and how wonderful so much of it is and how rewarding the London art scene can be (and it often is rewarding) but hell, Condo, is that really the best you have to offer?  Sometimes you just have (reluctantly) to call it as it is… (sw)

Condo continues in 23 London galleries and spaces until February 17th. Check the Condo website and the links for opening times.